Thursday, February 12, 2015

HONDURAS UPDATE

I'm in Ocotepeque, Honduras for the week with the Catholic organization Unbound and before I forget--I say become a sponsor of a child or old person pronto!

I'm going to, the minute I return home.

It's unbelievable how much thirty bucks a month means to the folks here who use the money for, among other things, school supplies, food, medicine, clothing, and/or a roof.

I'm going to work up a piece for The Tidings when I return home with more info on the incredible work and spirit of this great organization. Processing the five days I've spent here will take weeks.

On a more personal note, I was holding up quite well till Day Three of non-stop travel, people, and visits. The printed schedule said we were to return to the hotel by 5 at which time I had planned to enjoy a precious hour "to myself" when I could take a much-needed walk. When I realized that wasn't going to happen, and that I was going to have no free time that day whatsoever, and that we were also going to miss Mass, I could feel myself caving. Then I snapped.

"So what time are we going to get back to the hotel?" I keened. "I cannot do this again tomorrow." .

And it was true. I really couldn't have.

What I've learned is that when you say to normal people, "I can't function if I don't have time to myself," what they hear is "I'm a selfish whiner making an unreasonable demand" and what they figure is "Just push the laggard: she'll fall in with the rest of us if she has to."

But I am not kidding. After a certain amount of time with other people I go into mental, emotional, spiritual and nervous-system overload to the point where my system simply crashes. I can't hide my discomfort. I'll become visibly agitated. Then, depending on the situation, I'll get belligerent. And finally, I'll become catatonic. I'll just close my eyes wherever I am and, like one those bugs who rolls themselves into a ball, refuse to participate: in line at the bank, in the middle of a conversation, at your wedding. Heck, at my wedding.

Most people, i.e. extroverts may find it a little extra trouble to be with people for 12, 14, 16 hours a day, but what the hey. In fact, they ENJOY being with people for 12 hours straight. They don't even think about it.

For an introvert like me, 12 hours of people is like running a marathon. You have to practice. You have to prepare and pace yourself. You feel like throwing up halfway through. You stagger through the finish line, if at all, sweating and shaking. Then you collapse and have to recuperate for a few days.

Anyway, at the risk of appearing selfish, weak, and standoffish, I opted out of Afternoon 3 of visits with the people of Honduras. People who suffer extreme poverty, a government that does nothing for them, and hardships unimaginable to a person from the First World.

I got dropped at my hotel and I got to simply lie on my bed and be for an hour. I fell asleep. I woke and had a cup of coffee and then I set out on a walk: to the commercial strip, to the hilly streets above the city, and then down and around again to an area near the church where I wandered about, delighting in the random sights: an old green wooden door, a high adobe wall behind which grew a tree with vibrant orange flowers, a red-tiled roof sprouting air plants.

By this time the sun was setting and I found a low wall and just sat: drinking in the light and the mountains. Smoke drifted. A jacaranda tree bloomed. A man walked by with his young son: Buenas. Buenas. On a telephone wire right above me perched a magnificent bright yellow bird. Black markings. A notched tail. Suddenly it flew spreading its wings to reveal a thrilling expanse of golden chest.

That was when I truly "felt" Honduras: its land, the people I'd met, its beauty, its suffering.

So all was well. That little bit of solitude and inner silence set me right.

The next morning we got to celebrate Mass with the children at Casa Hogar. I sat in the back with three small boys beside me, sharing their hymn sheet. Arlin, the special needs kid, played tambourine.

At the petitionary prayers, one girl prayed for the people who didn't have a roof over their heads like she did, who didn't have food to eat like she did, who didn't have access to an education as she did.

Above the alter hung a crucifix with the lacerated Christ who these children knew well.

At the Sign of Peace, they circulated: smiling, touching, embracing us.

The whole trip would have been worth that one half-hour--and my time with the bird.

ARLIN (SEE PREVIOUS POST) WITH HIS TAMBOURINE
WAITING FOR MASS TO BEGIN.
HIS TIMING AND RHYTHM WERE GENIUS.

A THOUSAND THANKS TO THE UNBOUND STAFF IN OCOTOPEQUE: HENRY, MIRIAM, LUIS,
NOE, NARESLI, CLAUDIA, AND THE GREAT MAYRON;
TO ELIZABETH AND BECKY, HIGHER-UPS FROM UNBOUND HQ IN KANSAS CITY;
TO MY CO-JOURNALISTS JD, LIZ, AND SARAH, AND
TO THE CHILDREN OF CASA HOGAR

Michael. I can always count on you! The birds and flora here are incredible. Many were familiar to a Los Angeleno but there were lots of new ones. Including varieties of aloe. hibiscus and succulents I've never seen. I went back last night to look for the great kiskadee but he wasn't there...thanks for the ID.

Thank you fellow introverts! I can't really "feel" a place till I've been outside in it: hearing the birds, observing the clouds, inhaling the smell of the streets. I can't wait to get home and truly process/start writing about my time in Honduras and the work of Unbound. Also to have a Starbucks.

Heather, I'm technically an extrovert, ENFJ on the Myers Briggs, but I get what you are saying about down time COMPLETELY. Many, many years ago when I was falling apart and distressed that I couldn't take excellent care of others, I had a psychiatrist say to me. "If you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anyone also. So, so true.

As a fellow introvert, Heather, I understand completely! And it reminds me of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's "Gift from the Sea," where she writes the following:

"The world today does not understand, in either man or woman, the need to be alone. How inexplicable it seems. Anything else will be accepted as a better excuse. If one sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement or a shopping expedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange. What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it—like a secret vice!

Actually these are among the most important times in one’s life—when one is alone. Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. The artist knows he must be alone to create; the writer, to work out his thoughts; the musician, to compose; the saint, to pray. But women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves: that firm strand which will be in the indispensable center of a whole web of human relationships."

I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES!!

I'M RESTLESS, IRRITABLE, AND DISCONTENT

I'M SO LONESOME I COULD CRY

I CONFESS

FLANNERY O'CONNOR

ST. THÉRÈSE OF LISIEUX

"If you are willing to bear serenely the trial of being displeasing to yourself, then you will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter."

GERALD MANLEY HOPKINS

"Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain."

DOROTHY DAY

"We have all known the long loneliness, and we have found that the answer is community."

CARYLL HOUSELANDER

"I think all teddy bears should have knitted suits."

ROBERT BRESSON

"Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen."

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

"The world will be saved by beauty."

BILL CUNNINGHAM

“I don’t work I only know how to have fun every day…. It’s as true now as it ever was: He who seeks beauty will find it!”

JACQUES LUSSEYRAN: BLIND HERO OF THE FRENCH RESISTANCE

"The self-centered life has no place in the world of the deported. You must go beyond it, lay hold on something outside yourself."

EMILY DICKINSON

“I like a look of Agony/Because I know it’s true”

GLENN GOULD

"I've had all my life a tremendously strong sense that indeed there is a hereafter, and that the transformation of the spirit is a phenomenon which one must reckon and in light of which one must attempt to live one's life."

MARIA YUDINA

Sviatoslav Richter said of her: "One day she developed a crush on someone who didn’t return her advances. One can understand why; he must have been terrified of her. And so she challenged him to a duel."

ALBERT CAMUS

"I came to literature through worship."

RAYMOND CHANDLER

“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”

PIER PAOLO PASOLINI

“I have an almost ideological esthetic preference for nonprofessional actors who themselves are shreds of reality as is a landscape, a sky, the sun, a donkey passing along the road.”

PEACE PILGRIM

"There is a magic formula for resolving conflicts. It is this: Have as your objective the resolving of the conflict, not the gaining of advantage."

SIMON RODIA

“I had it in my mind to do something big—and I did.”

FRANZ WRIGHT

"Soon, soon, between one instant and the next, you will be well." From "Nude with Handgun and Rosary."

MARIA CALLAS

"I prepare myself for rehearsals like I would for a marriage."

WERNER HERZOG

HERZOG “Take a close and very long look into the eyes of a chicken…It's the most horrifying, cannibalistic, and nightmarish creature in this world."

CARLO CARRETTO

“The perfection of God is cast in a material which men almost despise, which they don’t consider worth searching for because of its simplicity, its lack of interest, because it is common to all men.”

JEAN-HENRI FABRÉ: THE HOMER OF THE INSECT WORLD

“After eighty-seven years of thought and observation, I say not merely that I believe in God—I can even say that I see him.”

DONALD EVANS

“It was vicarious traveling for me to a made-up world that I liked better than the one I was in…No catastrophes occur. There are no generals or battles or warplanes on my stamps….Sometimes I get so concentrated in these worlds I get confused. …It’s hard to get out.”

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

"Every man's life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers."

EDDIE AIKAU

“Eddie didn’t take off where everyone else took off. He took off deeper.” Eddie's brother Clyde.

MARTA BECKET

“Society laughs at old people’s dreams. They even laugh at dreams…until they come true.”

KAZUO OHNO

"The best thing someone can say to me is that while watching my performance they began to cry,”

BETTY MacDONALD

"'There's nothing as cozy as a piece of candy and a book."

LOUISE NEVELSON

"I feel that what people call by the word ‘scavenger’ is really a resurrection."

SVIATOSLAV RICHTER

"During one period of chronic depression, it was impossible for me to live without a plastic lobster that I took with me everywhere."

THE BROTHERS QUAY

"It's that little glint, that privileged look into a keyhole, and realizing suddenly that there's this little universe that's probably suffering and barely breathing, but it's pulsating, vibrating, with its own life. That in itself is a metaphor of the universe."

THE KING: "MAN, I REALLY LIKE VEGAS."

Jesus statue found in Elvis's bedroom at Graceland. Photo by H. King.

BILL MONROE

"Bluegrass has brought more people together and made more friends than any music in the world."

BILL W.

"We'll make it not because we're a better people--but because we're a weaker people."

BILL HICKS

"By the way, if anyone here is in marketing or advertising...kill yourself. Thank you."

MORE FASCINATING PLACES

MY NEW BOOK! HOLY DESPERATION

PRAYING AS IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT

As St. Thérèse of Lisieux said, "All prayer arises from incompetence. Otherwise there is no need for it." Self-obsessed, easily distracted, full of petty judgments and irrational fears, I should know. Thoughts on the development of my own "inner life."

MY OTHER BOOKS

PARCHED

SIN, REDEMPTION, AND REHAB

REDEEMED

STUMBLING TOWARD GOD

SHIRT OF FLAME

ROAMING K'TOWN, L.A. WITH THÉRÈSE OF LISIEUX

POOR BABY

A CHILD OF THE 60'S LOOKS BACK ON ABORTION

HOLY DAYS AND GOSPEL REFLECTIONS

COLLECTED WRITINGS FROM MAGNIFICAT

STUMBLE: VICE, VIRTUE, AND THE SPACE BETWEEN

ESSAYS ON CRISIS, SALVATION, AND THE DAILY TRAGICOMEDY OF THE CROSS

STRIPPED: CANCER, CULTURE AND THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

MY GOING-AGAINST-MEDICAL-ADVICE "CANCER MEMOIR"

STRIPPED BOOK TRAILER: NATTERINGS FROM JOSHUA TREE...

LOADED: MONEY AND THE SPIRITUALITY OF ENOUGH

HOW I WENT FROM TRYING TO GET BY ON 27 CENTS A DAY TO A FULL, RICH LIFE OF SERVICE TO MY FELLOW SICK PEOPLE!